Weird Three Kingdoms

Chapter 3799 A Glimmer of Light Breaks Free
In the northern part of Ye City, Zhou Zhang's small courtyard appeared even more cramped in the bleakness of autumn.

If we look at the seal script, the character 逼 is composed of two parts: 辵 and 畐. 辵 symbolizes marching with a flag, while 畐 naturally represents property. However, in the process of simplification in later generations, the original meaning was gradually forgotten, while the connotation of being low-class became more memorable to the common people.

Young people who don't know its true meaning, upon seeing this character, become excited, touching it and smiling broadly.

Hormones determine sexual urges, regardless of gender.

The same applies to Zhou Zhang.

He had almost forgotten why he had come to the Central Plains of Shandong in the first place...

Until his lower body, his belly, his excrement and farts, reminded him exactly where his buttocks were...

You can't just hang it in a tree, can you?

Zhou Zhang's courtyard wall was not high, barely enough to block the view from the outside world, but it could not block the increasingly intense atmosphere of despair.

Several jujube trees that should have been laden with fruit at this time of year now have only bare branches pointing towards the gray sky, as if silently begging.

Don't ask why it doesn't bear fruit, or why it has no leaves...

Not gnawing on the tree bark is already a sign that Zhou Zhang was showing mercy.

Of course, more importantly, the bark is really hard to chew.

The small vegetable patch that had been cultivated under the tree had been carefully cleared away by Zhou Zhang himself in the early stages of the siege, leaving only cracked clods of earth.

The daily rations of grain for the government offices were decreasing in quantity and quality.

Zhou Zhang was a low-ranking official, and the share he could receive was already limited; now he was even more strapped for cash.

That small amount of fine millet, which might have been enough to fill one's stomach on ordinary days, was especially precious in the face of the uncertainty of when the siege would end.
This is not only food, but also "currency".

Zhou Zhang carried a mostly empty rice sack filled with the "refined grains" he had just received that day—mixed with a little sand but still passable—and walked heavily toward the checkpoint connecting the north and south cities. As an agricultural official and a former member of Cao Cao's army, he possessed a token that allowed him to pass through within a limited time, which was now his only "privilege."

The soldiers guarding the checkpoint recognized him and routinely checked the tally. Their gaze lingered for a moment on the rice bag in his hand, their eyes filled with a complex mix of greed, envy, and something else entirely…

When food becomes hard currency, it demonstrates a value beyond its monetary worth.

Not only can it be used to eat, but it can also be used to exchange, or even to exchange for another person...

Many people in the city traded grain for a batch of goods in the south of the city.

The soldiers assumed that Zhou Zhang was also preparing to replace a maid or keep food as a backup.

Zhou Zhang lowered his head and hurriedly passed through the doorway that symbolized a world of difference.

Upon entering the southern part of the city, the air seemed to instantly become thick and polluted.

It is no longer the kind of "quiet" or "cleanliness" that the North City deliberately maintains with a tense order.

After all, there is no hygienic city evaluation activity in the southern part of the city.

What comes into view is the most authentic chaos and decay of the common people at the bottom of Ye City.

The streets were crowded with people who were pale and thin, with empty eyes, sitting or lying down, lifeless.

The faint cries of children, the painful groans of patients, and the low curses coming from somewhere intertwined to create a chilling background soundscape.

Sewage flowed freely, garbage piled up in the corners, emitting a putrid stench, along with a...

A faint, unsettling fishy smell mingled together.

Zhou Zhang's heart leaped into his throat.

He saw several familiar, yet now unfamiliar, faces.

Those farmers, they used to look at him with hopeful and grateful eyes in the fields, listening to him explain the alternating paddy field method and the use of the new seed drill. At that time, looking at the lush green seedlings and the heavy ears of rice, he also felt a sense of accomplishment, as if the technology he brought could really change something.

But now...

He saw a familiar old man, huddled under the dilapidated eaves. His once robust body was now just a skeleton supporting loose skin, his eyes cloudy, unresponsive to Zhou Zhang's passing. Beside him, a woman was boiling something in an earthenware pot. Inside, suspicious, dark-colored tubers and leaves, perhaps with some grass roots, swirled, with almost no trace of grain.

Zhou Zhang lowered his head, not daring to look any longer.

The Cao family government had an order: "Do not look at what is improper, do not speak what is improper, do not listen to what is improper."

Blocking, silencing, and creating a social bubble.

Zhou Zhang walked to the courtyard of a farmer's house he had visited many times and was relatively familiar with. The gate was ajar, and he gently pushed it open. The courtyard was empty; the chicken coop and duck shed were already bare.

A sallow-faced, emaciated man was squatting on the ground, laboriously peeling a piece of bark from a tree with a dull knife.

"Brother Li...?" Zhou Zhang called out tentatively.

The man looked up and saw Zhou Zhang. A faint light flashed in his eyes, but it quickly dimmed, replaced by a deep weariness and wariness. He gave a forced smile as a greeting, scrutinizing Zhou Zhang before his gaze was involuntarily drawn to the rice bag in Zhou Zhang's hand, like iron filings meeting a magnet.

"Zhou... Zhou, the Agricultural Assistant." The man's voice was dry and hoarse. He struggled to look away from the tree bark in his hand. "You... why are you here?"

Zhou Zhang placed the rice bag on the ground, making a slight thud.

"Brother Li, how about we exchange this small amount of refined grain for some...some coarse grain that can stave off hunger, or..." Zhou Zhang said with difficulty, feeling his cheeks burning.

Replace refined grains with whole grains.

Actually, Zhou Zhang misunderstood...

Zhou Zhang originally considered exchanging fine grains for coarse grains to be a form of "exploitation," an injustice incurred by officials, and therefore felt somewhat ashamed. After all, while the government might normally require farmers to pay fine grains as taxes, sometimes, due to storage or allocation needs, they would allow coarse grains to be used in lieu of fine grains at a certain ratio. This substitution was often disadvantageous to farmers, becoming a form of disguised exploitation.

However, Zhou Zhang hadn't considered the current situation...

The man surnamed Li stared intently at the rice sack, his Adam's apple bobbing. After a long pause, a flicker of struggle crossed his eyes. He stood up, brushed the sawdust from his hands, and said in a low voice, "Zhou Nongcheng... you're a good man. But... in Nancheng now, where can you find coarse grains...?"

Zhou Zhang knew that coarse grains were enough to fill one's stomach, but didn't the people of Nancheng know that too?

The man surnamed Li smiled bitterly, pointed inside the house, then around, "We've long since eaten everything edible in the house. Tree bark, grass roots... we're almost gone too."

Looking at Zhou Zhang's rice bag, Li couldn't help but swallow hard. "Zhou, the Agriculture Assistant... you... you need to be careful..."

Perhaps Zhou Zhang didn't take the dark alleyways when he came, or perhaps he had made quite a few good connections when he was an agricultural official near Ye City. In any case, Zhou Zhang's behavior of carrying a bag of rice, like a child carrying gold and swaggering through the city, did not result in any attacks along the way.

Zhou Zhang wasn't stupid. Seeing this, he quickly covered the rice bag slightly with his robe, but his heart sank. 'Then...then isn't the government providing relief? Didn't they say they'd give a hundred bushels every day...even just some bran...?'

"A hundred bushels?!" Li Shi's voice suddenly rose as if she'd heard the funniest joke. She laughed loudly twice, her face revealing a clear yet suppressed resentment. "The lords of the North City don't even have enough to eat themselves! How could they care about the lives of us lowly commoners of the South City! The gates are locked; without official credentials, they won't let you in or out, claiming it's to prevent spies from the Imperial Guards… Heh, spies? I think they're preventing us starving people from stealing their grain!"

Zhou Zhang was speechless. He knew that what Li said was true.

Chen Qun's control measures, ostensibly for the sake of stability, actually pushed the people of Nancheng into an even deeper abyss.

"Then...then you..." Zhou Zhang's voice trembled slightly. He dared not ask any further, but that terrible conjecture was like a venomous snake, gnawing at his heart.

Li looked around, put down the blunt knife in her hand, and then leaned closer, lowering her voice to say, "Zhou Nongcheng, you are a respectable man, so there are some things... you shouldn't pry into. Live one more day at a time."

He paused, his gaze sweeping over Zhou Zhang's rice bag again. "You should keep this refined grain for yourself. In the southern part of the city, it's too conspicuous. Besides, you can't exchange it for any coarse grains... really, you can't. Unless you're trading it... you wouldn't want to trade for that kind of thing, would you?"

The last few words were spoken by Li through gritted teeth, revealing an indescribable sadness and pain.

The government is turning a blind eye.

The authorities forbade us to speak out.

If I say it, it will be blocked.

Zhou Zhang left the rice bag he brought with him at Li's place and did not take it with him.

He still had some grain stored at home, but compared to the Li family and the people of Nancheng, it was already much better...

After leaving the Li family home, Zhou Zhang walked aimlessly through the streets of Nancheng.

The faint fishy smell seemed to be getting stronger.

He instinctively followed the stench and peered into a relatively secluded alleyway.

Then, he saw it.

It was an extremely secluded corner, almost completely hidden by the collapsed earthen wall.

He wouldn't have noticed it at all if he hadn't specifically looked for it.

A simple shed propped up with rags and sticks, with a wooden board hanging at the entrance whose original color was indistinguishable, without any words on it.

A strong, nauseating stench of blood and an indescribable putrid smell assaulted the senses. Beside the shed, several pieces of... were hanging from a crooked wooden pole with rough straw ropes...

meat.

Zhou Zhang felt a churning in his stomach. He grabbed the dirty wall beside him and began to gag violently, but nothing came out. Only acid and bile burned his throat.

All his efforts to increase agricultural production, all his ideals of improving people's lives through technology, seemed so ridiculous, so pale, so... at this moment, in the face of this hanging flesh.

Meaningless.

Where did the agricultural technology he brought, and the increased grain production, ultimately go?
Zhou Zhang knew the answer, but he had pretended before, or perhaps he thought that as long as the powerful and wealthy officials in the north city got rich first, the common people in the south city would also benefit a little...

But now he understands that even if the granaries of the powerful and wealthy in the north city were filled and the officials who lined their own pockets were fattened, it would not be able to relieve the suffering of the most ordinary people who cultivated the land with their own hands!
Over the years, Zhou Zhang and Zhou Zifeng have studied diligently, delving into agronomy. They traveled from Yanzhou to Guanzhong, and then from Guanzhong were ordered to come here. What was their purpose?! They did indeed increase the yield per mu and the harvest, but apart from receiving a "not bad" from their superiors, the lives of the people of Yecheng did not change much.

They were poor before, and they are still poor now.

I struggled to survive before, and I still struggle to survive now.

Some people even started to fall from ordinary family backgrounds, like the Li family he knew...

In a daze, Zhou Zhang passed through the checkpoint again and returned to the North City.

The moment I stepped into the northern part of the city, it felt like entering another world.

Although the streets were deserted, they were clean and tidy, without piles of garbage or sewage, and the air was free of that nauseating stench.

One could even faintly hear the sounds of string and wind instruments drifting from the depths of some grand mansions, mixed with indistinct but definitely noisy commotion from a banquet.

Zhou Zhang returned to the entrance of his desolate little courtyard. Listening to the faint music that seemed so out of place with the hellish scene of the southern city, a huge sense of absurdity and powerlessness almost overwhelmed him.

He recalled his days under the command of the General of the Cavalry.

Before arriving in Guanzhong, he followed Chen Gong and witnessed the infighting and empty talk among the aristocratic families; after joining the General of the Cavalry and entering the Agricultural Academy, he saw a completely different scene.

There is an upward vitality there, and a basic respect for "human beings".

Seek truth and justice.

Instead of trying to cover it up.

When the officials over there encountered problems, they mostly said, "Let's think of a solution together..."

The officials here most often say, "That's what the higher-ups have decided, there's nothing I can do about it."

In Guanzhong and Hedong, when agricultural scholars went to the fields to provide guidance, the people lined the streets to welcome them, genuinely grateful for the techniques that could increase their crop yields. Indeed, a portion of the harvested grain did end up in the hands of the farmers themselves.

Zhou Zhang brought increased production to the farmland around Ye City, but none of the increased production went into the hands of the ordinary people of Ye City.

Zhou Zhang had previously heard officials in Ye City say that there were too many people in Ye City. If they were distributed evenly among everyone, there wouldn't be many people. It would be better to keep them here so that important matters could be accomplished...

At first glance, it seems to make some sense, but the "big deal"...

Roads and bridges were indeed built, but the exact amount spent and the number of "major events" accomplished—how many roads were built and bridges were constructed and then demolished—may be unknown even to the officials directly involved.

Only now did Zhou Zhang truly realize that Cao's political group was rotten to the core!

Chen Qun may have been intelligent, but what he upheld was precisely this cannibalistic system. Chen Qun could use schemes to temporarily deceive the cavalry outside the city, and he could use harsh laws and punishments to temporarily suppress the people inside the city, but this was nothing more than drinking poison to quench thirst.

The old system in Shandong has lost the support of the people and the ability to reform itself. It is like a big tree that has been hollowed out by termites. It may still be supported on the outside, but it will collapse with a strong wind.

This time, the cavalry besieged the city. Perhaps, just perhaps, Cao Pi and Chen Qun could hold it by chance. But what about next time?

This corrupt regime was destined to be short-lived.

So how much longer do I have to stay in this quagmire?
To continue being a powerless bystander? Or even an indirect one...

accomplice?

No.

A resolute glint gradually ignited in Zhou Zhang's eyes.

He couldn't just wait for the city to fall and then perhaps survive by virtue of his status as a former subordinate of the General of the Cavalry.

He had to do something. Not for some grand achievement, not even entirely for his own survival.

He just...

I can no longer endure the agony of watching a tragedy unfold while being powerless to do anything about it.

He wanted to save some people, even just a few, those people from the southern city whom he had once guided, who were now struggling on the brink of death.

But what should we do?
To directly incite the people to rebel?
That would be suicide. Chen Qun's control was extremely tight, and although the previous attempt to lure and kill the cavalry with false information failed, the resulting strong suppression of the people of the southern city had made them like frightened birds, filled with suspicion and fear of any information from "above." They had been hurt too deeply and deceived too many times. Simple appeals would not awaken them at all; on the contrary, they might immediately bring about their deaths.

Their perceptions must be changed.

Zhou Zhang paced back and forth in the small courtyard, his brows furrowed.

He needed an opportunity, or a message that the people of Nancheng could see, hear, and understand.

Break through official censorship, silence, and the cocoon.

This message could shatter the false perception that Chen Qun had deliberately created: that the "Piaoqi Army was brutal and only a defensive force could withstand the attack."

He recalled the policies of the Flying Cavalry, and the information that was widely publicized but deliberately concealed or distorted in Shandong.

For example, the resettlement measures for civilians who voluntarily surrendered, the treatment of prisoners of war, and the principles for land redistribution...

The people of Nancheng knew almost nothing about these things.

All they heard was the propaganda from the Cao family government about how the Flying Cavalry had "massacred" and "plundered" cities.

Even if someone speaks the truth, they are quickly censored or arrested, so no one continues to speak.

perhaps……

You can start here.

Zhou Zhang's gaze fell on the old wooden box he used to record his observations of farming in the room.

There were some papers and linen he had saved up.

He can't speak or promote it directly.

That would be too obvious, too easy to get caught.

He needs to use some form, a form that can spread quietly and stimulate thought.

He thought of drawing.

Simple, easy-to-understand pictures that can transcend the barriers of language.

He can draw pictures with strong contrasts.

On one side, there is the scene of Cao Cao's army using civilians as shields, burning villages, corrupt officials, and starving corpses everywhere in the southern city; on the other side, there is the imagined scene of the Flying Cavalry Army being orderly, distributing food, and the people cultivating their own land.

But he quickly abandoned the idea because it was too complicated.

Even if he had such artistic talent, the common people might not be able to understand it.

So it doesn't need to be too complicated, and it's even okay if it's a little naive. The key is to convey the hope that "there might be a way out on the other side"...

There are also short sentences.

Use the simplest language to point out the key points.

For example, "Open the city gates to welcome the royal army, distribute land equally and exempt from taxes."

Or perhaps it was said, "The General of the Cavalry does not kill those who surrender, but only executes the ringleader, Cao."

Or is it saying, "The people of Nancheng are also Han citizens, why should they be enslaved and guard this isolated city?"

However, Zhou Zhang abandoned these thoughts after a moment, because the words were too obvious. Some of the proclamations shot into the city by the cavalry had contained similar words and were quickly confiscated. If anyone was found to be hiding them, they would be beheaded.

Zhou Zhang needed a way to be hidden, circulated, and understood by the people without causing them any psychological burden, but without directly violating the prohibition set by Chen Qun...

After all, if his actions were discovered, he would undoubtedly die, and the death would be extremely gruesome.

It's tough. Zhou Zhang was even considering giving up.

However, thinking of the meat hanging in the south city, the numb and desperate eyes of the people in the south city, and the faint sounds of music coming from the north city, Zhou Zhang felt that he could no longer remain silent.

He once thought that agricultural techniques could bypass politics and benefit the people.

Now he understands that technology is powerless in the face of a corrupt system.

To truly save these people, we must first destroy the invisible cage that hangs over the southern city.

He drew a skinny child, stretching out his hand and pointing at the city wall, which was tall and imposing.

Then, outside the city walls, he drew an outline without a specific face, but radiating light...

Beside him, he simply wrote two words—

A way out.

The flickering light cast his long, swaying shadow on the wall, mirroring his turbulent yet unprecedentedly resolute inner state.

Is this method effective?

he does not know……

But we should at least give it a try.